| gnomersy |
Can you use a craft check in place of a knowledge check if the check in question involves something you craft? I ask because a fellow player was so convinced that he refused to hear out why I thought otherwise.
I'm pretty sure technically speaking no you can't. But as a GM it helps verisimilitude that if you can create something you at least have some knowledge of it so a DM may wish to allow it also it makes people feel like their skills are useful.
| loimprevisto |
Check: You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft's daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.)
Within these fairly narrow limits I usually allow craft (and profession) to be used for a knowledge check, and RAW seems to support it.
| loimprevisto |
It's not a house rule, the part I quoted was from the PRD and it explicitly says that Craft includes knowledge of the tools associated with the trade, performing the trade, supervising untrained laborers, and handling problems that come up during the trade.
This is extremely limited knowledge and is unlikely to be used more than a handful of times in the course of a campaign. For example, instead of using knowledge (nature) to determine that the pirate's ship is constructed entirely from darkwood harvested from the farthest reaches of the exotic southern islands one might make a craft (carpentry) check.
StabbittyDoom
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I'm also on the "yes" camp here.
It is something the book supports, it is something that written adventures support, and it is something necessary for those skills to even make sense.
If you didn't allow Craft/Profession to be used (in limited case) in place of Knowledge, then you would have carpenters who couldn't tell you what type of wood a building was made of (Knowledge [Nature]) or tell you where its weak spot is, despite having built such buildings themselves (Knowledge [Engineering]). You'd have servants who couldn't tell you anything about the nobility they serve that outsiders didn't already know (Knowledge [Local] or [Nobility]). You'd have town guards who don't know their own laws (Knowledge [Local]). The list goes on.
Now, this isn't to say that the DC might not be higher with Craft/Profession, and the variety of checks they can make are most *certainly* more limited. To use the town guard example above, they could tell you local laws (assuming they're any good at their job), but unlike Knowledge (Local) they can't tell you about the laws of any other location, they can't tell you the abilities of humanoids, they can't tell you about the myths of legends of various peoples, etc.
EDIT: The TL;DR of the above is "Yes, but they can only do so for a very limited set of knowledges."
Happler
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I too am in the "yes" camp.
Otherwise what does a "Profession: Herbalist" skill represent, other then the knowledge of what herbs are good for what?
Knowledge skills show a much broader scope then profession/craft checks.
For example, while both Kn: Nature and Profession: Herbalist could tell you what a plant is and what it is good for, the Kn: Nature check could also tell you what animals are likely to eat that plant, if that rock outcropping near the plant is natural or not, and that the rain that is falling on the plant right now is not natural.